Pages

01 February 2016

A brand new prison history website called ‘Inside Boggo Road’ was recently
launched by the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society. You can check it out here. It’s fair to say that it is the best website on the subject out
there, and one of the most comprehensive prison history portals in
the world. This boast is not made lightly, but the truth is that most websites
associated with historical prisons tend to be a bit light on the history side of
things, with just a few pages devoted to the subject.So far, 'Inside Boggo Road' contains over 160 pages of information and hundreds of images, with more to come as we develop the site even more.

The idea was to transform some of the information collected over the years by
the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society volunteers into a one-stop online centre. The
centrepiece is the ‘History Vault', which contains numerous sections on different aspects of prison history. These include:

Prison
Life: The ins and outs of everyday life for staff
and inmates inside Boggo Road.

Research
Centre: Tips and useful links for people researching Boggo Road and
Queensland prison history.

Each of the sections mentioned above links to further specialised-subject pages, which themselves contains links to further material. In addition to all this, there is also info on what is happening with Boggo Road now, the ongoing work of the BRGHS, and a shop, among other things. I did much of the work on 'Inside Boggo Road' myself, and the intent was to produce a clean, simple design, avoiding the current fad of websites overloading their landing pages with massive graphics but little obvious navigation or useful information, sacrificing substance for style. The focus is on presenting a genuinely useful, in-depth exploration of Boggo Road and Queensland prison history through the decades, in a way that it is relatively easy to navigate. It is still a work in progress and we are smoothing out the wrinkles, but we're pretty happy with it so far.